Pursuing Truth and Transparency in America's Food System

March Against Myths

Why Forbes Deleted Some Kavin Senapathy Articles

Kavin Senapathy emerged as a writer in 2015 with articles promoting GMOs, defending pesticides and attacking critics of the agrichemical industry, many of them published in Forbes. She does not disclose her funding sources.

In 2017, Forbes deleted seven articles Senapathy co-authored with Henry I. Miller, a former Hoover Institution fellow, following revelations in the New York Times that Monsanto ghostwrote an article published under Miller’s name in Forbes. Forbes also removed an article Senapathy wrote about transparency, which lacked transparency. Still up on the Forbes site is an article she co-wrote with Cameron English, who works for the American Council on Science and Health, a front group paid by Monsanto.

Senapathy co-founded March Against Modification Myths (MAMyths), a group that organizes protests against biotechnology critics (and an affiliate of the GMO promotion group Biofortified). She co-authored a 2015 book that promotes GMOs, claims aspartame and MSG are safe, and purports to explain the “facts behind those toxic pesticide scares.”

At Least Seven Articles Removed by Forbes

Collaboration with Henry I. Miller

Senapathy began sharing a byline with Henry Miller in 2015 on a series of articles in Forbes defending GMOs. The articles are promoted here by the Hoover Institution, a policy think tank that receives funding from right wing foundations and corporations.

“Documents show that Henry I. Miller … asked Monsanto to draft an article for him that largely mirrored one that appeared under his name on Forbes’s website in 2015 … Forbes removed the story from its website on Wednesday and said that it ended its relationship with Mr. Miller amid the revelations.”

“All contributors to Forbes.com sign a contract requiring them to disclose any potential conflicts of interest and only publish content that is their own original writing. When it came to our attention that Mr. Miller violated these terms, we removed all of his posts from Forbes.com and ended our relationship with him.”

The emails between Miller and a Monsanto executive show how corporations work with writers such as Miller to promote industry talking points while keeping their collaborations secret. In this case, a Monsanto executive asked Miller to write a column defending glyphosate and provided him with a “still quite rough draft” as “a good start for your magic.” The draft appeared a few days later in Forbes, largely unchanged, under Miller’s name.

Transparency Blunder

Forbes also removed at least one article with Senapathy’s solo byline. The August 17 piece, “This Crowdfunded Experiment Offers a Lesson on Transparency” (which now appears on Medium), criticized Monsanto for ghostwriting safety reviews for glyphosate, describing the incident as a “transparency blunder” and a “PR gaffe.” Although published weeks after news reports that Monsanto ghostwrote an article for her collaborator Henry Miller, Senapathy’s article about transparency neglected to mention that fact.

“Legitimate objections” raised about “independence”

In a Sept. 2015 Project Syndicate article titled “GMOs and Junk Science,” Senapathy and Miller accused the organic and natural food industries of abusing scientific authority and producing propaganda. Project Syndicate added this editor’s note to the piece on August 4, 2017:

“Legitimate objections have been raised about the independence and integrity of the commentaries that Henry Miller has written for Project Syndicate and other outlets, in particular that Monsanto, rather than Miller, drafted some of them. Readers should be aware of this potential conflict of interest, which, had it been known at the time Miller’s commentaries were accepted, would have constituted grounds for rejecting them.”

Underhanded Tactics of MAMyths

Senapathy is co-founder of March Against Myths of Modification, a group that organizes protests to confront critics of the agrichemical industry, such as Dr. Vandana Shiva, and sometimes uses underhanded tactics. In 2016, MAMyths orchestrated a failed attempt to derail a Center for Food Safety event in Hawaii featuring Vani Hari, The Food Babe.

“24 hours before I was scheduled to take the stage, I was informed by Hawaii CFS that the pro-GMO and satire activist group (MAMyths) launched a campaign to sabotage the event. The tickets to the event were free, but there were a limited quantity available as the venue could only accommodate a certain number of people …

MAMyths asked their followers to reserve blocks of tickets using fake names and fake emails so that it would appear to be “sold out” and that we would be speaking to an empty venue. They reserved over 1,500 tickets using names like “Fraud Babe,” “Organic is Dumb,” “Susi Creamcheese,” and “Harriett Tubman” from traced IP addresses outside of Hawaii and overseas in the United Kingdom, Australia, China, Thailand, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

They were unsuccessful because Hawaii CFS discovered where these bogus requests were coming from and were able to easily cancel their reservations.”

MAMyths claims on their website they are “not paid by Monsanto or any other industry. We are all volunteers with a passion for justice and do this of our own free will.” According to Senapathy’s bio on the site, “She believes that critical thinking is key in raising well-rounded children, and that embracing biotechnology is imperative to this objective.”

Book Describes the Food Movement as a “Terrorist Faction”

Senapathy is co-author of a book, “The Fear Babe: Shattering Vani Hari’s Glass House,” published in October 2015 by Senapath Press. The book promotes genetically engineered foods, claims aspartame and MSG are safe, and purports to explain the “facts behind those toxic pesticide scares.”

The book’s forward describes the food movement as “a modern day elite and well financed terrorist faction sworn to use fear to force political change around food,” and an “agile and sneaky terrorist group. Like all terrorist groups they achieve their objectives through the implementation of fear and coercion.”